Imbibe Consciousness and Culture with Cocoa Tea
“Cocoa Tea” is a popular Caribbean drink, but music fans know it’s also the name of one of reggae’s sweetest singers and best live performers. After more than four decades in music, Cocoa Tea is an uncompromising reggae legend. A […]
Imbibe Consciousness and Culture with Cocoa Tea
By Stephen Cooper
“Cocoa Tea” is a popular Caribbean drink, but music fans know it’s also the name of one of reggae’s sweetest singers and best live performers. After more than four decades in music, Cocoa Tea is an uncompromising reggae legend. A […]
Reacting to violence, a personal history: My unforgettable college stabbings
Violence can and does occur anywhere at any time to anyone. While our current mass shooting epidemic has thrust this fact of being alive into our daily consciousness, I
Reggae icon Max Romeo: “How do you fight the devil with a lawyer?”
In a career spanning fifty-five years, legendary reggae star Max Romeo’s many hit songs have brought joy to millions of fans and influenced generations of artists, including rap mogul
Julius Jones’s Hail Mary to escape a 21st-Century-style lynching
Recently, by filing a petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court of the United States, Julius Jones, a black man condemned to death in Oklahoma, threw the legal equivalent of
Black Uhuru’s Duckie Simpson: ‘I’m a Nine-Star General Now’
After watching legendary reggae band Black Uhuru perform in September of 2016, I wrote, “Duckie Simpson is an ageless, still spry reggae icon; like fine wine, his artistic beauty
Sly Dunbar: 10 minutes with the superstar drummer
Sly Dunbar is one of the most innovative and influential drummers of all time. Individually and together with his “riddim twin” bassist Robbie Shakespeare, Dunbar has played with the
Why Twitter brings out my worst self (and perhaps yours)
As a full-time freelance writer — having transitioned from law practice at midlife, accursed with all the selfish, self-doubting sensibilities that kind of crisis entails — Twitter brings out my absolute
Keith Tharpe and the Death Penalty’s Racist Roots
Recently, the appalling spectacle of a black man condemned by a Georgia jury, a jury that included a racist bigot, reentered the American consciousness; if you haven’t heard about
Supreme Court screw-up sullies U.S. Constitution
Giving a speech at Georgetown University, late Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., said: “[T]he Constitution is a sublime oration on the dignity of man.” However, after the Supreme Court’s
Scientist vs. Cooper, The Interview: Round 2
Honoring the 78th birthday of the late dub music pioneer Osbourne “King Tubby” Ruddock (1941-1989), Jamaica’s leading daily newspaper the Gleaner published an article at the end of January